Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

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2006) and are good revision tools (Evans, 2008), as they can be listened to outside class and repeatedly so, which is important to develop automaticity (Alonso et al. 2005: 221). Other advantages of podcasts are that they allow for flexibility, they are portable and they allow students to learn autonomously (Edirisingha, Salmon and Fothergill, 2007). Finally, podcasting is sustainable as it is a low cost, low barrier technology (Rosell-Aguilar, 2007). The blog The blog, for which I chose the easy-to-use Posterous platform which can be updated via email, served mainly as a delivery platform, which allowed students to access the podcasts and transcripts in a fast and simple way to either read and listen online or download them to their computers or mobile phones for offline listening and reading. I also occasionally provided additional exercises and links to useful websites. Figure 2: Blog for the taxi English course on the Posterous platform As can be seen in Figure 2, the blog had a search function (top right) so that students could find the topics they were interested in reviewing easily. I also tagged each blog post/podcast episode with relevant keywords, which were automatically listed on the right sidebar of the blog under the heading ‘Tags’. Clicking on any of the tags or keywords brings up a list of all the blog posts/podcasts with related content. The blog also allowed students to subscribe to it via RSS, which informs blog readers about new blog posts or podcast episodes and allows them to see the content with so-called ‘aggregators’ or ‘RSS readers’ on the web, a computer, or on a mobile device without having to visit the website itself. I did not specifically explain this feature because my students knew when I would upload a new podcast. This feature is more interesting for those who follow or subscribe to several blogs and podcasts. 136 | Blended learning: podcasts for taxi drivers
Sustainability Blended learning often means more investment in resources (e.g. financial, human, technical) (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004; Littlejohn, 2004), which neither my students nor I had as it was a low-budget course and my learners were busy. Therefore, I created sustainable courseware with the following features: ■■ short recordings, chunked material ■■ reusable learning objects ■■ easy to update, reorganise, reassemble or copy ■■ limited number of easy-to-use tools ■■ easy familiarisation with tools, tasks, and layout ■■ RSS, tagging, search tool (see above for an explanation) ■■ easy and flexible access to material. Further planned adaptations I considered adding students as contributors to the blog so that they could continue recording themselves, upload the files to the blog and ask for peer feedback even after the course, but due to the short duration of the course this was not possible. Another idea was to develop a second module of the course for those taxi drivers who wanted to take it a bit further with their English language skills because they are also sometimes booked for private tours and then often serve as guides as well, or at least have to do more small talk. Connected to this was my idea to conduct short interviews with tourists in Bursa about Bursa, and make audio or video recordings which would then be posted on the blog. Ideally, they would be made by students (for example, when waiting for passengers or on a tour during breaks) and I could create tasks around them. Lessons learned and advice I believe the blended approach helped make this course a success. The short duration of the course and the few hours I had with these particular students with their needs as described above would not have been enough to give them sufficient help and practice in order to enable them to actually use the language at work. I believe the blended approach helped my students to develop their language skills in a shorter time and become more confident in using them in real-life situations as we can see from the comments they made about improving and using some of what they had learned with passengers, even while the course was still going on (see Introduction). Although all students had mobile phones, most of them were not smartphones. This meant the learners had to go to the blog, download the podcast episode, transfer it to their mobile phones and print out the transcript. There was no way of doing this automatically unless they only wanted to listen to the podcasts on their computer. The other alternative was to transfer the recordings to the students’ Blended learning: podcasts for taxi drivers | 137
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Blended Learning in English Languag
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ISBN 978-0-86355-706-4 © British C
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Part 3 - English for Specific Purpo
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Acknowledgements We would like to t
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To address this deficit I proposed
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Introduction This introductory chap
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an almost identical definition in h
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■■ Learners’ expectations - l
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To achieve a ‘principled approach
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its weakness in speaking.’ Contra
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References Adair-Hauck, B Willingha
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Rossett, A, Douglis, F and Frazee,
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1 A collaborative online reading an
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engaging approach to teaching, wher
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page evaluation strategies, and col
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Conclusion Students received course
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2 Blended learning in English for A
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All in the blend Reports on the app
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level of agreement or disagreement
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Hyland, K and Hyland, F (1992) Go f
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Why blend? The decision to offer th
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to complete during the before, whil
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In addition, there are a number of
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Turgut, Y (2009) ‘EFL learners’
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■■ English for Academic Purpose
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Figure 1: Stages of the incorporati
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Table 3: Schedule for Unit 1 Week U
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Internet - links and WebQuests: Som
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References Allan, M (1985) Teaching
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My advice to intending EAP course d
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5 A blended learning teacher develo
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The face-to-face element Because of
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ookmarking because social bookmarki
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and instructional design of the onl
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Encourage learner autonomy and refl
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packages, setting up online account
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Clearly there are advantages to hav
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Page 117 and 118: Comments on Part 2 Brian Tomlinson
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Page 171 and 172: Comments on Part 3 Brian Tomlinson
Page 173 and 174: 17 A thinking-based blended learnin
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Figure 1: Cycle of working with gra
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Model by JP, Form 10 Structure Mode
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Recommendation 2 Ensure that the on
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Sokol, A (2008) Development of Inve
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Moreover, as a result of increased
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In general, the students remarked t
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19 Students’ CALLing: Blended lan
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The students were taken to the comp
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When considering blended learning,
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Introducing Macmillan English Campu
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In both scenarios, the ratio of con
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attending scenario 1 courses. The o
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Comments on Part 4 Brian Tomlinson
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Conclusion Claire Whittaker
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Table 1: Neumeier’s (2005) framew
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Reasons given in the literature for
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Software Author and Chapter New Lea
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Keedwell’s (Chapter 13) blend on
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Table 7: Learning theories, languag
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What will the interactional pattern
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Whittaker (Chapter 16) believed tha
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Summary This chapter draws on the l
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Appendix 1 - Questions for blended
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Contributors Peter Aborisade lectur
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Jody Gilbert taught in post-seconda
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Juanita Pardo-González (BA Hons in
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The British Council is pleased to o
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Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

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